Sometimes the common phrase “finders keepers” can be held true. In many cases, treasure from a ship can actually go to the new finders instead of the original owner for several different reasons. The question of who it should go to lawfully has complexed many treasure-hunters and courts alike. The finder should be able to claim the treasure because they invested their own time and money into finding it, without them, the ship would still be hidden, and the owner was not looking for it.
First of all, the finders invested their own time and money into recovering the treasure. Locating and salvaging a ship is never free and can cost millions of dollars. Even if someone were to spend a large sum of money on a shipwreck, they should be able to make a fortune back from the ship's cargo. Sometimes it can take very many years to even locate a ship. According to Juan Manuel Santos, president of the Columbian search …show more content…
If something has been gone for centuries, it is very likely that its location has been lost too. Some things get lost without the owner knowing, and when the finder finds that, they may be able to keep it or return it for a reward. Often, there are shipwrecks that have been forgotten from hundreds of years ago and a person discovers it, they should have the claim, as they found it when it was long gone.
In 2009, the Odyssey Marine Exploration discovered a big shipwreck: “...a British warship that sank 264 years earlier during a storm.” Sometimes things are a “treasure trove” which are beyond lost, abandoned, or mislaid - “that refers to any property that is verifiably antiquated and has been concealed for so long that the owner is probably dead or unknown…” so when a person finds it, they usually get to keep it as the owner is gone. Not only do the finders contribute to the decision of who it will go to, but so do some things the owner does or does not